On World Grandparents’ Day, MAAT presents a ceramics workshop for grandparents and grandchildren, inspired by the exhibition Poetic Earth, by Anna Maria Maiolino.

Starting with clay as a sensitive and primordial raw material, this activity invites participants to slow down and return to learning with the hands: kneading, cutting and rolling, gestures common to ceramics, cooking and many other familiar routines. As the artist recalls: ‘I stole from ceramicists, bakers and cooks the initial gestures of their work: kneading, cutting, rolling.’* Through repetition and transformation, manual creation becomes a place of encounter between generations, where memory is constructed in the process itself.

With an approach that is both educational and playful, the workshop challenges grandparents and grandchildren to come together and create small clay shapes, experimenting with ceramics techniques such as using rollers and modelling by pinching the clay.

*Records of visits by the curators to the artist’s studio in October 2024. 

Useful information

Dates: 26/07/2026

Time: 15.00–17.30

Target audience: Children (aged 6+) and adults.

Duration: 2h30

Language: Portuguese 

Capacity: max. 20 people (10 children and 10 grandparents)

Local: MAAT Gallery (Oval Gallery and Education Centre)

Meeting point: Entrance hall of MAAT Gallery

Price:

• €8 per child
• €11 per adult (ticket includes access to all museum exhibitions)
• Free for MAAT Friends (advance online booking required)
   

About Ceramista Shop

Ceramista Shop is a project dedicated to promoting and valuing contemporary ceramics in Portugal. More than a commercial space focused on the sale of materials, clays, tools and equipment, it positions itself as a platform for exchange between makers, audiences and tradition, seeking to bring people closer to manual work and to direct contact with the material itself: earth.

Through workshops, training programmes and collaborations with cultural institutions, Ceramista Shop encourages the discovery of ceramics as an accessible artistic practice deeply connected to human experience. Its tutors are practising ceramists who share technical and creative knowledge in an environment open to experimentation and learning.

Alongside its activities, Ceramista Shop maintains a clear social commitment: to contribute to the development of ceramics in Portugal by supporting the transmission of knowledge, valuing craft practices and fostering new generations of practitioners. By encouraging contact with clay and the fundamental gestures of modelling, it also seeks to create moments of encounter, creativity and reflection on the value of making by hand in the contemporary world.